Printing equipment, including desk-top printers used in association with computer print-out material from word processing, spread sheet preparation, and the like, becomes dirty over a period of use as paper path surfaces collect random image-forming particles, dust, paper residue, etc. This build-up of particulate can cause reduced-quality printing as well as harm to the equipment itself, and therefore necessitates a maintenance program that includes periodic cleaning of rollers and other printer components that come into contact with the sheets of paper upon which images are printed.
One typical manner of cleaning such printing equipment is to introduce a tissue paper having absorbed therein a liquid solvent such as an alcohol for dissolving particulate. This procedure is followed by wiping and drying the cleaned components for subsequent operation of the equipment. Another manner of cleaning paper paths is to provide a sheet having an extremely aggressive adhesive coating that must be maintained behind a liner until the sheet is used. The aggressiveness of this adhesive is so great that the leading edge of the sheet cannot have adhesive there applied because jamming of the printing apparatus would result when the sheet is introduced to the paper path. Further, of course, the presence of a liner and its required removal results in inefficient operation as well as waste of materials. As is therefore evident, both of these procedures are inconvenient, time-consuming, and potentially messy, and make apparent the presence of a need for a cleaning device that can routinely effectively and efficiently clean the paper path surface of the printing equipment. Accordingly, a primary object of the present invention is to provide a cleaning device that can clean the surfaces of a paper path directly and without hardship.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a cleaning device constructed as a flexible sheet that can be fed directly into printing equipment as would be fed a sheet of paper.
Yet another object of the present invention is to provide a cleaning device wherein an adhesive is coated on a flexible sheet for removing foreign matter from the paper-path components of the printing equipment.
These and other objects of the present invention will become apparent throughout the description thereof which now follows.